2014-03-25

25 Man Roster Challenge Update

We have been thinking about doing an update regarding the 25-Man Roster Challenge for a few days now. With less than a week to go, things are still somewhat unsettled with respect to your Toronto Blue Jays opening-day roster.

There isn’t much point in going into too much detail about the remaining job battles and where they're currently at—the minute this post is uploaded, things are certain to change. This has been one of the most interesting and frustrating spring training camps to watch in recent memory.

With respect to the challenge, it appears as though someone going 25-for-25 will have to wait for another year. Up until the demotion of Anthony Gose, both Team @gregorMLB and Team @scottwspicer had real shots at the elusive perfect ballot. It now seems that having just one player wrong might be enough to take home the prizes and bragging rights.

Of course, things could change if Jose Reyes’s hamstring isn’t fit enough for games, or Dustin McGowan’s general arm/shoulder area starts to hurt again, or Casey Janssen can’t answer the bell after having only a week of practice, or someone finally realizes that Ryan Goins is at the very best a really shitty utility player, or Erik Kratz and his handful of bullpens is somehow deemed to be better at catching the knuckleball than Josh Thole and his 565 2/3 innings of major league game experience, or Matt Tuiasosopo impresses enough with his play in a short period of time, or J.A. Happ refuses the pending optional assignment he is surely to receive, or another borderline MLB player gets plucked off the waiver wire.

Got all that? Did we forget anything?

The following teams, as of right now, have only one player wrong on their ballot:

Team @gregorMLB

Team @scottwspicer

Team @BirdsOfBABIP

Team Man With The Golden Arm

Of note is that Team @BirdsOfBABIP has Jeremy Jeffress and lottery ticket Ubaldo Jimenez on his ballot. Since Jeffress is still technically in the hunt for a job, we couldn’t rule him out as a "possible" to break camp with the team, even though it appears to be a longshot. It should also be noted that all of these ballots have Josh Thole winning the back-up catching job. If he gets cut and starts the year in AAA, this thing could get real interesting in a hurry.